Followers

Monday, July 18, 2005

Despite demands to the Iranian mullahs from heads of state, freedom activitist, and bloggers from around the world, the dissident blogger Akbar Ganji is near death from a hunger strike."When asked whether he was willing to risk his life by speaking on the record, he replied, "My objective in life is to free my country that is in such misery." He added, "This is what we are about, and we have no fear.""Mr. Fakhravar said that Mr. Ganji was placed in solitary confinement in section 240 of Evin prison, an area of the facility where, according to Mr. Fakhravar, female enemies of the revolution in 1979 and 1980 were raped before they were executed. "It is against Islamic law to kill a virgin," he said.(read on)

The growth of blogs and the bloggers driving them is a true phenomena with the under thirty crowd in Iran. And it's highly likely that this explosion of on-line publishing is what will bring the mullahs down. Some estimates place the number of bloggers in Iran at more than 63,000 and growing daily, and this number doesn't include the Iran expatriates, large numbers living in first world countries, most blogging and all part of the opposition.